Dream Theater Keyboardist Talks About Going Solo

In a brand-new interview with the Get Ready To Rock! web site, Dream Theater keyboardist Jordan Rudess was asked how easy it was to escape the Dream Theater "web" while composing the material for his latest solo album, "Rhythm of Time." "Well, I believe that I am a very established composer," Jordan replied. "Dream Theater is one of my passions and my main job right now, but as far as escaping from a musical point of view, no problem! I have a million of ideas that need to come out musically, and even one album that I just did is really not enough. It was cool to come out of the Dream Theater world for a while and do this one, because I have created some very interesting heavy sounds for the new album. 'Train of Thought' is a really heavy and metal album for which I have created all these cool distorted keyboard sounds, and I thought that if I could take the experience of this heavy album, and all the sounds that I made for it and bring it in to my world, I could then extract what I want to use from that sound and I could also put my classical, fusion and jazz influences together and create my own music.

"I’ve got more information even now than ever before about the Dream Theater sound. I've contributed more to Dream Theater, and I've learned more from them. So, as far as using Dream Theater as a basis for moving away from them, this is even more powerful. I feel really good about doing that, and I realize that the core audience for this album will primarily be Dream Theater fans who would like to check out what Jordan Rudess does by himself, but I mean, think about it… Some of the Dream Theater fans don't have a clue as to how much music I actually contribute to the band, but when they hear this, maybe if they're smart, they will start to get a grasp of that, but even if they're not, they will probably just like the music. They will definitely detect the Dream Theater influences, but they will also go for a ride on other musical journeys that don't exist in the Dream Theater domain."